Oli Stolcker
'Oli H. Stolcker '(full name: Olivier Hubert Stolcker) is a Hulstrian Hosian Democratic politician and the current leader of the Hosianisch-Demokratisches Verbund. Being elected to lead the HDV after decades of opposition to the hard-right LBU government, Stolcker is best-known for his attempts to reinvent and rejuvenate the previously dominant party. Placing a strong emphasis on compassion, Stolcker is very much seen to have led the HDV in a move to the left, attempting to place the HDV back into the political centre. Biography Early life Oli Stolcker was born to Hubert Stolcker, a banker, and his wife Sarah, a part-time teacher. His father was active in the local Liberal association, even standing for the Reichstag a single time in the normally HDV-dominated rural Wahlkreis ''of Vormergau, Kuratha. Stolcker had a quiet and quite privileged youth, attending private school and afterwards Heinrich University, the most prestigious university in the country, where he studied Law and Economics. At Heinrich University, Stolcker engaged his political interest first in the local chapter of the JuLi's, the youth wing of the LVP, as part of a try-out scheme run by the chapter, but in the ever-increasing populist-libertarian atmosphere, he was never truly at home, and he let his membership lapse after the trial period, never joining the LVP. His involvement with the church - his parents had been church-goers - led him to serve for a year as chairman of the student executive of the Kien student chaplaincy. One of the student chaplains, the Luthoran Theodor Normelmann, had a large influence on him, interesting him in Hosian-social political thought. After a year during which he gradually drifted towards Hosian Democracy, Stolcker joined the Junger Verbund and the HDV in 3645, and with his large network, became Chairman of the JuVe chapter at Heinrich University the year after. Following his graduation in 3648, Stolcker moved to Labsburg, where he worked as a lawyer first for a large law firm and then for a firm of his own, Stolcker und Ichiyama Advokatur. Trained in private law and especially labour law, Stolcker was employed numerous times by the Vereinte Hosianische Gewerkschaftsbünder, the second-largest trade union confederation in the Crownlands, which was always seen as a HDV affiliate. In 3652, he was drafted to run for the safe seat of Labsburg St. Martinus as part of a talent scouting and coaching programme set up by party leader Silvan Gubler, and was elected to the Reichstag. Entry into politics As a high-potential Hosian Democratic MdR newly elected in the 3652 election, Stolcker nimbly avoided taking sides all too strongly in the leadership contest, but supported Gubler against Kasaya. As a backbench MdR, he made his name by sponsoring several private members' bills with a more social policy outlook, which brought him to the attention of both the media and the party leadership. Shortly after, in a reshuffle of the spokesperson team in 3654, he was appointed Education and Culture spokesperson. As Education and Culture spokesperson, Stolcker championed initiatives for disadvantaged areas, investing in technology in the least-performing schools to allow them a means of catching up. Leader of the HDV (3659-present) As the HDV kept failing to make headway in the polls, Stolcker teamed up with fellow young MdR's including his later allies Rorensu Fukuyama and Hedwig Wertmann in a group often informally referred to as the ''Dreiziger-Gruppe, as its members were all in their thirties, to discuss the need for generational change within the HDV. At first, the party leadership was not very receptive, but there was much sympathy within the membership for the group, leading to some initiatives for renewal being implemented by Central Office, although reluctantly. When Kasaya resigned due to her failure to achieve a polling breakthrough, the Dreizigers nominated Stolcker as a candidate to succeed her. On the same informal "ticket", Fukuyama and Wertmann were nominated for Deputy Leader and Party Chairman. Running on a platform he called "Neu-HDV" (the new HDV), Stolcker achieved great popularity among the membership, leading him to an eventual election victory by an overwhelming two-thirds majority of the membership. The new young leadership team (with both Stolcker and Fukuyama at 36) set out immediately to "reinvent" the party, with Stolcker spearheading a renewed focus on compassion for the party and a new logo being introduced to represent an "optimistic, inclusive and modern" ''HDV. Steering the HDV on a collision course with the incumbent LBU government, Stolcker called for more compassion and humanity in public policy, and was seen by many to move his party to the left. This came to a head when the ''Sozialmonitor ''for 3660, a publication of the Imperial Office for Statistics and Social Research, showed poverty on the rise and causing increased social problems in the Crownlands. Moving quickly to capture the issue, Stolcker's HDV introduced a bill for a living wage, sparking a public debate on the issue which Stolcker participated in by means of an extensive ''Gerade vom Herzen ''tour through the Crownlands, during which he profiled himself as the leader of an opposition alternative. The success of the ''Gerade vom Herzen-tour saw Stolcker's profile and popularity rise greatly to the point where, barely a year after being elected as party leader, he was seen as the main challenger to Staatsminister Werner Luscher for the next general election, with polls showing him as being popular in the traditionally progressive Crownland of Hulstria and in the HDV's traditional Mitranian heartland, with polls in Kuratha being neck-and-neck. In addition, polls showed that the HDV had appropriated several of the issues arising from the Sozialmonitor, including social justice, social security and unemployment, and was successfully targetting voters who previously voted for the now-absent left wing of Crownlander politics. The general election of 3662 saw the Hosian Democrats put in their best performance since 3621, almost 50 years before, placing second behind the governing LBU, winning the Governor-General's office for Silvan Gubler and taking the Crownlands of Kuratha and Hulstria. In the process, they destroyed the 17% lead the LBU had held over the other parties since the previous election and were widely seen to have humiliated Staatsminister Luscher by winning an absolute majority in his home Crownland of Kuratha, where the Staatsminister personally led the LBU list. All this led to Stolcker being seen as the moral winner of the night, having been firmly confirmed as leader of the opposition. On election night, Stolcker immediately called upon the government to moderate its economic course.